waiting for asparagus 27been deprived of sunlight by a heavy mulch pulled up over the plant’s
crown. European growers go to this trouble for consumers who prefer the
stalks before they’ve had their first blush of photosynthesis. Most Ameri-
cans prefer the more developed taste of green. (Uncharacteristically,
we’re opting for the better nutritional deal here also.) The same plant
could produce white or green spears in alternate years, depending on how
it is treated. If the spears are allowed to proceed beyond their fi rst explor-
atory six inches, they’ll green out and grow tall and feathery like the
houseplant known as asparagus fern, which is the next of kin.
Older, healthier asparagus plants produce chunkier, more multiple
shoots. Underneath lies an octopus- shaped affair of chubby roots (called
a crown) that stores enough starch through the winter to arrange the phal-
lic send- up when winter starts to break. The effect is rather sexy, if you’re
the type to see things that way. Europeans of the Renaissance swore by it
as an aphrodisiac, and the church banned it from nunneries.
The earliest recipes for this vegetable are about 2,500 years old, writ-
ten in ancient Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphics, suggesting the Mediter-
ranean as the plant’s homeland. The Caesars took their asparagus passion
to extravagant lengths, chartering ships to scour the empire for the best
spears and bring them to Rome. Asparagus even inspired the earliest
frozen- food industry, in the first century, when Roman charioteers would
hustle fresh asparagus from the Tiber River Valley up into the Alps and
keep it buried there in snow for six months, all so it could be served with a
big ta-daa at the autumnal Feast of Epicurus. So we are not the first to go
to ridiculous lengths to eat foods out of season.
Northern Europeans didn’t catch on to asparagus until much later, but
by the time they came to the New World, they couldn’t leave it behind.
It’s a long- lived plant whose seeds are spread by birds from gardens to
hedgerows, so we have wild populations of it growing in every temperate
part of North America where enough rain falls to keep it alive. It likes
light soils where the top few inches of the ground freeze in winter. It’s es-
pecially common along roadsides and railroad right- of-ways that are kept
clear of overlying vegetation. Wild asparagus is not always tastiest but of-
fers the advantage of being free. My father used to love bringing home
bundles of it in early spring when house calls took him out on the country